unity-design team mailing list archive

[Faheem Padia <f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I tend to agree that LIM is not the way to go and I also think HUD could prove to be invaluable. But to your point about the icon being to small a target I'm not sure this will be the case. I mean even in the current state of LIM the user will have to click on an icon to reveal the mean so why would it be any more difficult to hover of the menu? In any case the menu icon can be made larger if this is really a problem cant it?

with regards to the problem of smaller windows, this is a good point that I had not considered. One potential way of dealing with this would be to extend the menu bar beyond the window edge. Although that sounds weird on the face of it, I think if the animation was smooth it could be made to look quite good. Obviously this in itself will introduce other problems like what if the window is near to the edge of the screen etc. but its just a thought

Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:33:32 +0000
Subject: Re: [Unity-design] (no subject)
From: shaneymail@xxxxxxxxx
To: f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx
CC: unity-design@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Also, there would need to be a solution for dealing with menus in small windows.
Would the menus be truncated or maybe compacted into a LIM style menu then? 
Though the latter idea would probably over complicate matters somewhat and maybe be confusing.


On 14 March 2012 00:30, shane lee <shaneymail@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I agree about LIM.  I used a similar system on KDE (oxygen-appmenu) and at first I liked it a lot but over time it becomes a huge annoyance.
It feels inconvenient when you are just trying to get to a particular menu item quickly (which is where the HUD could prove invaluable) and it can be frustrating when you open a submenu and the mouse goes slightly in the wrong place and in trying to correct you end up losing the menu and have to start again.


As far as I'm concerned, LIM is NOT the way to go unless it is optional and not default.

As far as your idea goes for integrating into the titlebar:
This is something I have also suggested in various places and seems the perfect solution.


The menu is out of sight when not needed but just as easy to access as traditional (boring) window menus.
The best bit is, it's consitent with the global menu so users who choose to have the menu on the menubar or integrated into individual windows would still be instantly familiar with the behavior (windo title replaced by menu on mouse-over).



My only concern about your specific idea is the menu icon may be too small a target for many users.
Discovery probably wouldn't be a problem since users would likely mouse-over the menu icon just to see what it is but more experienced users would want to move their mouse where the expect the menu entry to be, not move to the menu icon then move across to the menu entry.



I think for such an idea to fully work, one would need to be able to place the mouse in any part of the title bar.



On 14 March 2012 00:11, Faheem Padia <f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:






Sorry to re-post but I've been advised that emailing all contacts the way I had first time wasn't the best way of starting a discussion so this should correct that...

Hello to all,



I have just joined the list because I had a design idea for the

implementation of the locally integrated menus that are supposed to be

introduced at some point. I originally put the idea on brainstorm but it

was marked as 'not an idea' on the basis that unity design is actively

discussed in other places. I guessed this was on such place where my

idea might be more appropriately voiced but if I am wrong please let me

know. Anyway on to the idea...



Basically from the opinions of other Ubuntu users I have read (mostly on

OMGUbuntu) I understand that LIM is not particularly popular in its

current form. The 2 main criticisms I have come across commonly are that

1. having a vertical menu is not convenient and requires re-learning the

arrangement of menu items unnecessarily and

2. implementing LIM would mean an additional click is required to

actually see the menu which is counter-productive



so my idea so solve both of these would be to have an animated reveal of

the menu horizontally in the window title bar when the mouse hovers over

the menu icon. This would keep the menu as close to how it is currently

but also introduce the LIM concept of having the menu attached to the

title bar of an application. This solution also doesnt introduce any new

problems of dragging windows (that I have come across from other ideas)

since the menu only reveals when the mouse passes over the menu icon and

not over the title bar in general.



I'm sure a number of ideas for this have been explored and I apologise

if this particualr idea has also been discussed but it would be

interesting to hear other peoples opinions nonetheless.



Thanks 		 	   		  

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